Some Meanings of Utah History

Salt Lake City, ca. 1959, when the state's economy was largely managed in Washington, D.C. USHS collections.

Some Meanings of Utah History

BY THOMAS G ALEXANDER

AT THE STATEHOOD DAY BANQUET IN JANUARY 1995 I sat between Richard Roberts, a history professor at Weber State University, and Kim Burningham, executive director of the Utah Statehood Centennial Commission. As we conversed, Kim asked me what contribution I expected to make in writing a new history of the state.1 This is a fair question and it is one that I tried to answer as I talked with him.

First, I told him, I believe it is time that we look at the lives of Utahns as a single piece As any of you older than forty understand, we used to conceive of history as the story of past politics Later historians started adding chapters on the economy and on social history More recently they have begun to add separate chapters discussing culture. If you look at the recent comprehensive treatments of Utah's past: Utah'sHistory that Richard Poll, David Miller, Eugene Campbell, and I edited in 1978 and that Dick updated for republication in 1989, Dean May's Utah: A People'sHistory (1987), and Charles Peterson's Utah:A Bicentennial History (1977), each of them contains a discussion of minority groups, religion, and culture, but each also tends to provide only a minimal integration of cultural features with political and economic patterns That is, the authors have tended to view such topics in relative isolation rather than seeing the lives of people as an integrated whole.

This is not meant to be an indictment of anyone. After all, I was one of the authors of one of those histories. It is the way we used to view things.

Now, I believe, however, that in order to help us understand the world in which we live we need to do something different. We need to see our lives and the lives of other Utahns as a whole—as an integrated unit.

We are notjust political beings as Aristotle suggested, or even economic and social animals. We also engage ourselves in the arts, sports, recreation, literature, in music, and religion. Historians need to develop methodologies to interpret the ways in which people's various cultural attributes interact with their political and economic lives. Moreover, we cannot simply see the lives of women and men as separate from one another. We cannot just have separate chapters on women in our history books. Women and men have worked together to achieve common goals and to make their communities better places for themselves, their neighbors, and their families

Beyond this, we need to offer a more complete treatment of the twentieth century. The history of Utah's people begins with the Native Americans—Paleo-Indians, Archaic, Anasazi, Fremont, Numic, and Dine—and with Latino explorers and missionaries who lived here and visited Utah before the nineteenth century. Still, the best-documented portion of our story really begins in the 1820s with the arrival of the mountain men. The documents then expand in number after 1847 when the first parties of Mormon pioneers arrived and when Utah's population began to grow rapidly. As peoples with other religious beliefs—Protestants, Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Jews, and Buddhists—and ethnic groups other than northern Europeans— Chinese,Japanese, Greeks, Italians, African Americans, and Latinos— arrived, the volume of data on our history expanded exponentially.

If we date the well-documented portion of Utah's history from the 1820s, more than half the state's readily recoverable past lies in the twentieth century. Previous histories have generally emphasized the nineteenth century. I have tried to remedy that deficiency by devoting more than half the pages of my new work to the period since statehood.

I have also taken cognizance of an unfortunately neglected dimension of Utah's past. Utahns are an overwhelmingly urban people More than half of all Utahns have lived in cities since the 1920s, and the 1990 census revealed Utah as the eighth most urbanized state in the nation. More than 83 percent of our people live in cities, and three-fourths of all the state's citizens reside along the Wasatch Front. I have, therefore, paid considerable attention to the role of cities in Utah's experience.

Because of the importance of land, water, minerals, and other natural resources in Utah's past, I have also paid more than usual attention to the interaction of Utahns with their physical environment How have Utahns used the land, watercourses, plants, and animals around them? Why have so many controversies in our past centered on the ownership and use of natural resources? We need to understand these things.

Now, let us turn to another matter Some commentators have criticized historians of Utah's past for paying too much attention to the Mormons. In this connection I would note that when I took Utah history from George Ellsworth at Utah State, one comment among many he made stuck in my mind. He said that students often complained to him about how much time he spent lecturing on the Mormons. Then he pointed out—quite properly I believe—that studying Utah history without talking about the Mormons would be like discussing the European discovery of America without mentioning Columbus.

I agree with his point of view. I should hasten to add, however— and I am sure that George would agree—that this does not mean that other peoples do not deserve our attention Each group of peoples who came to Utah has made numerous contributions. It does mean, however, that we ought to understand the contribution of the majority as well as of the minority

Nevertheless, everyone has certain biases. I do not believe that anyone can be completely objective. In writing history I have tried to be fair and balanced I would emphasize, however, that I consider fairness and balance as attributes of honesty rather than of objectivity. I recognize that I carry particular cultural baggage. I am a CelticAmerican Latter-day Saint man. I do not apologize for that condition; it is a fact of biology and of culture. However, such a fact is no reason to slight other peoples or genders or to treat them with disrespect Regard for others is also part of my cultural baggage.

Now, with this rather extended background, I wish to reflect on the meanings of Utah history and on some of the features that strike me as particularly significant.

We may not do too much violence to Utah's past if we look at the movements of various peoples into Utah as waves of invaders. The earliest invaders were the Archaic peoples. They invaded a land previously occupied by plants and animals Then came the Anasazi and Fremont. There is some tendency for Euro-Americans to look back on these peoples—the Anasazi and Fremont for instance—with barely disguised smugness. I suspect that we do that because we compare our lives today with theirs 2,000 to 700 years ago. If, however, we compare their lives with the lives of Europeans during the same period—the Roman Empire to the late Middle Ages—we gain a different perspective Life expectancy of both peoples was about the same That is, whether you lived in America during Anasazi and Fremont times or Europe from the time of Christ to the period following the Norman invasion of Great Britain, you could expect to live about thirty-five years. 2 Moreover, in both places you could expect to live in a condition in which disease, warfare, and parasites ravaged your body. Neither America nor Europe was a paradise—writers like Kirkpatrick Sale and the legends of Arthur's Camelot notwithstanding. 3 Nevertheless, both peoples farmed, herded, hunted, and gathered locally. They also carried on a small trade with distant communities. Drought, warfare, and violence visited these ancient Utahns in the same way that the black plague and recurrent wars visited Europeans.

At the same time, we have every reason to believe that all of these peoples fashioned relatively satisfactory lives for themselves until extraordinary events intervened. In Europe the invasion of Germanic peoples marginalized the Celts—my ancestors—and wars and plagues ravaged the population. In Utah, something—we believe probably drought—eventually drove out the Anasazi and Fremont people, and an invasion of Numic peoples—the Utes, Paiutes, Shoshonis, and Gosiutes replaced them.

Later, the invasion of Euro-Americans—explorers, traders, trappers, overland migrants, and Mormon, Catholic, and Protestant settlers and miners marginalized the Numics and the Dine—the Navajo We ought to understand, however, that these Native American peoples were wonderfully adaptive. We do them little service by treating them as victims or objects of pity.

Let me give you an example. Instead of thinking of Walkara, the famous Ute chief, as a romantic figure in Utah's distant past—the "Hawk of the Mountains" as one biographer called him—think of him for a moment as a businessman. He established the base of his enterprises in Sanpete County. From there he ranged into the Latino settlements in Mexico and New Mexico, into the Mormon settlements in central Utah, and into the Latino and American settlements in California. He carried on an extensive business in such things as horses, weapons, and indentured servants. Like some other businessmen, he appropriated—stole—some of things he traded, and he gained some by barter or purchase. Walkara invited the Mormons to settle in Sanpete County. I suspect that he thought of this invitation as a prudent decision. After all he expected to trade with them and perhaps steal from them just as he did with the peoples of New Mexico and California In practice it proved bad business judgment. The Mormons wanted to make settlements; for them trade was a sideline to their primary activity of farming They reacted quite violently to theft. Eventually they overwhelmed and displaced Walkara's people.

But in making the decision to invite the Mormons to Sanpete, Walkara's mistake was not much different from those of other businessmen like Henry Kaiser or John Delorean in the automobile business. How many of you see a HenryJ on the road today, or how many of you have seen a Delorean sports car anywhere except in the Backto theFuture movies? Looking at Walkara's invitation with some perspective, it was certainly made on better information than the Koyle Dream Mine or the various get-rich-quick scams that so many Utahns have invested in over the past fifteen years Instead of ending up in bankruptcy court or in jail, Walkara and his people went to war. After his death they ended up on reservations.

If we review the internal workings of the Mormon kingdom in the nineteenth century, we see that both nineteenth-century and contemporary observers who have despised the Mormons most certainly have attributed more power and central control to the LDS hierarchy—particularly Brigham Young and his associates—than they ever possessed. Nineteenth-century Utah was undoubtedly an authoritarian theocracy, but it was not a totalitarian dictatorship. The Saints were generally disposed to follow their leaders in most religious, economic, cultural, and political matters, but the church leadership never exercised anything near absolute control.

If we examine several well-documented events in which Mormon leaders tried to order the members to do what they asked, we can gain some perspective on the limits of their power to organize and coordinate events Let me give an example. As Howard Christy has shown, after 1851 Brigham Young admonished the people to build forts and to follow a policy of defense and conciliation during conflicts with the Utes.4 In spite of these admonitions, many local communities, militias, and ecclesiastical and political leaders disregarded this counsel.

Think of conditions during the settlement of Utah County and the Walker and Black Hawk wars. Many towns refused to build forts, small parties ventured abroad to farm and trade, many people refused to pool their livestock, local militia rode out to kill Indians, and in several instances in Nephi and Sanpete counties, people massacred parties of Native Americans.

Here is another example In the 1870s Brigham Young and church leaders called on the people in settlements throughout Utah to join the United Orders. Many did join, but most dropped out quickly and a majority of the United Orders failed within a year. 51 would suggest that the demise of the United Orders perhaps as much as anything in nineteenth-century Utah represents the victory of EuroAmerican individualism over Mormon authoritarian communitarianism. But it also reveals that contrary to the conventional wisdom of critics, the Mormon people would often do what they thought was in their best interest—including committing violent acts and engaging in market economic activities—in spite of the counsel of church leaders. We should take into consideration this tendency to regard individual and local judgment as superior to church directives when we interpret such events as the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

I said earlier that I thought historians ought to integrate various aspects of our past—economic, political, cultural, social Let us take a closer look at that challenge, beginning with economics.

Since 1847 Utah's economy seems to have passed through four phases. The first phase was the Mormon Kingdom which lasted until the 1880s. The Mormons tried to promote a relatively high degree of economic self-sufficiency, and they were reasonably successful for about twenty years. Some vestiges of that kingdom remain in the settlements scattered throughout the Mountain West.

In the second phase, which I will call the Old Colonial Society, Utah became a colony of Wall Street. The shift to the Old Colonial Society began during the mining boom which started in the 1870s, and by 1900 the Old Colonial Society had replaced the Mormon Kingdom During this phase outside capitalists like Meyer Guggenheim, George Hearst, and William Rockefeller together with some Utah entrepreneurs like Thomas Kearns, Daniel Jackling, and Jesse Knight promoted mining development. Significantly, mining was perhaps only the most visible element of a much more fundamental change in the character of Utah's economy. During the Old Colonial Society most of the major businesses in the state came to be owned and managed from outside Utah, especially from Wall Street. This outside management included not only the mining companies but also public utilities and most of the major businesses—Utah Power and Light, Union Pacific, Southern Pacific, Denver and Rio Grande, even the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company which became a part of the national sugar trust.

The Old Colonial Society reigned supreme until the 1930s when the third phase, the New Colonial Society, began to develop During the Great Depression the federal government began to invest heavily in Utah. This trend continued into World War II and afterward until federal installations became the largest businesses in Utah. In the process, management of Utah's economy shifted from New York to Washington, D.C. Like the Old Colonial Society, the New Colonial Society was extremely important to the state.

Then, during the 1980s, conditions began to change. More and more, the largest businesses in the state came to be owned and/or managed in Utah rather than outside. By the late 1980s Utah had become a true commonwealth. It was no longer a colony. Both the Old and New Colonial Society economies diminished in importance. During the 1960s Utah received a great deal more money from the federal government than the average state. By 1984 it ranked slightly below the average. In 1984 the average American state received $2,962 per capita from the federal government while Utah got $2,930 per capita.6 In 1993, however, Utah ranked forty-fourth among the states in per capita income from federal payments at $4,011. The average state got $4,814.7

Significantly, both the Old Colonial Society and the New Colonial Society diminished as the Commonwealth Society came to dominate Utah. If, for instance, you compare employment in the twenty-five largest businesses in the state in 1992, the overwhelming majority of people worked for businesses that were owned and managed locally. Of the twenty-five largest businesses in Utah measured by total employees in that year, those from the Old Colonial Society employed 19,200 people. 8 Those from the New Colonial Society employed 27,300 people. The largest businesses in the Commonwealth Society employed 94,400 people, more than twice as many as employment in the vestiges of the Old and New Colonial Societies combined.

With this economic background, I want to discuss the integration of people's political, cultural, and social lives in these various societies I hasten to add that this is not meant to be an economic determinist argument. I would argue, in fact, that the Mormon Kingdom, the Old Colonial Society, the New Colonial Society, and the Commonwealth Society were integrated wholes. During the Mormon Kingdom, people controlled their political lives locally. Although the federal government appointed the governor, certain executive officers, and the judges, the Mormon-dominated People's party controlled the legislature and all the local governmental offices until the 1880s.

On the cultural scene, most artistic and literary endeavors took place locally Utah artists trained elsewhere—generally in Europe or the eastern United States—but they came to Utah to work, and the various artistic enterprises provided jobs for them. Think of George Ottinger, Dan Weggeland, and C C A. Christensen, all of whom made their living locally as painters. Utahns operated the Salt Lake Theatre, and they also ran theatrical and musical companies in the local communities Elmo G and Edward Geary have documented the lively dramatic enterprise in Castle Valley.9 My great-great-grandfather, Henry Hughes, who was a bishop in Mendon, advertised for people to move to his town in Cache Valley to build an excellent choir. Sports were also local and, like the various artistic endeavors, were also very popular. Some baseball games in Salt Lake City during the 1870s, for instance, attracted nearly half of the city's total population.10

As Utah moved into and passed through the Old and New Colonial Societies, cultural, political, and social conditions changed. Utah moved into the National Republican column during the Old Colonial Society In the 1930s, during the New Colonial Society, Utah became an overwhelmingly Democratic state. Then after World War II as the Republican party accepted the new role of the federal government and became in Dwight Eisenhower's phrase "modern Republicans," Utah tended to alternate between the two parties.

During the two colonial societies with their outside domination, the locus of power in the arts and humanities shifted to places outside Utah. Increasingly, artists and literary figures moved from Utah to ply their professions. Utah managed to promote some local enterprises especially in music during the New Colonial Society, such as the Utah Symphony and the Tabernacle Choir, but many of Utah's best artists and writers who did not have university appointments found it prudent to leave the state to earn a satisfactory living Thus we had a sizeable Utah community on the East Coast that included such people as Mahonri Young, Cyrus Dallin, Bernard De Voto, Virginia Sorensen, and May Swenson; and in California such people as Fawn Brodie and Wallace Stegner in literature and John Willard Clawson and Mary Teasdel in painting. Sports were also overwhelmingly colonial. Salt Lake City and Ogden had minor league teams—the Bees and the Reds—farm clubs of major league franchises. These teams played in the Pioneer League against clubs from Idaho and Montana.

I said earlier that the argument about the Kingdom, Colony, and Commonwealth was not meant to be economic. I can continue this illustration with a discussion of the arts under the Commonwealth. In many ways, the arts and humanities led the way into the Commonwealth Society, and the economy and politics followed. Because of musicians like Maurice Abravanel, dancers like Willam Christensen, and theater impresarios like Fred Adams, together with patrons like Glenn Walker Wallace, Wendell Ashton, and Obert Tanner, the Utah Symphony, Ballet West, and the Utah Shakespearean Festival became national institutions long before most of the largest businesses in Utah were locally owned or managed Moreover, by the 1980s Utah had artists colonies in Utah County, in Salt Lake City, and elsewhere with nationally renown artists like Marilee Campbell, Jeanne L. Lundberg Clarke, Lee Deffebach, Gary Smith, Dennis Smith, James Christensen, and Randall Lake.

The shift to big league sports took place at the same time. Perhaps the preeminent example is the Utah Jazz. As the Jazz moved to Utah in 1979, the management made a number of brilliant decisions. First, they enlisted the assistance of a number of community leaders like Wendell Ashton who had also helped to promote the Utah Symphony A second stroke of genius was hiring Brooklyn native Frank Layden from Atlanta, first as general manager and then as coach. Third, they managed to sign a number of high-profile and extremely talented players like Adrian Dandy, Mark Eaton, Rickey Green, Darrell Griffith, John Stockton, and Karl Malone. I suspect that Karl Malone is the best known African American in Utah. He is very good at what he does, and he has identified with the community by supporting such charitable enterprises as the Special Olympics.

Politics followed the same trend. The shift to Republican party domination in Utah began during the mid-1970s at the same time that a similar shift was taking place in other states throughout the American West. It was not something that took place in Utah alone, but the Beehive State followed the same trend as Wyoming, Idaho, Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada.

The economic development that led to the Commonwealth Society really took place during the late 1970s and 1980s. ZCMI expanded its operations by opening outlets throughout the state, and a number of important high-tech companies like WordPerfect, Novell, and IOmega established themselves in Utah while reaching out to capture markets beyond the state. A group of Utahns headed by Joseph Cannon bought Geneva Steel and transferred its management to Utah. First Security Bank became an Intermountain financial power. Moreover, it is not at all surprising that a Utahn, Larry H. Miller, should have purchased the Utah Jazz.

By the late 1980s Utah had become a true commonwealth. The Beehive State was no longer a kingdom or a colony. Perhaps the success in convincing the International Olympics Committee that the 2002 Winter Olympics ought to be held in Salt Lake City is the best symbol of that commonwealth status.

What does it really mean to be a Utahn? Some people who do not know much about the state insist that in order to be a real Utahn you have to be a Mormon Frankly, I find this absolute nonsense I suspect, for instance, that two of the best known Utahns in our recent past are Maurice Abravanel, a European-born musician, and Frank Layden, a Brooklyn-born basketball executive.

But, you say, they are immigrants to Utah That is true, but what we often forget is that Brigham Young, Eliza R. Snow, Martha Hughes Cannon, and Leonard Arrington were all immigrants to Utah as well. That they were Mormons is undoubtedly relevant to their religious life, but it does not by itself make them Utahns.

What is it that makes one a Utahn? Let me take the example of Maurice Abravanel. The Utah Symphony hired him as director in 1947 In 1949 he had an offer to go to Houston at a higher salary. That same year, J. Bracken Lee vetoed a bill that would have granted state funds to the Utah Symphony. That made Abravanel angry, but instead of throwing in the towel and moving to Houston he decided to stay and fight. In doing so, he cast his lot with Utah and he made the Utah Symphony into one of the nation's great musical organizations.

I would suggest that it is an act of will that brings someone to love Utah and its people enough to work and fight for it the way that both Brigham Young and Maurice Abravanel did. Becoming a Utahn is not a matter of place of birth, religious persuasion, ethnic background, economic status, or any such thing. It is a matter of the heart. We become Utahns because we love the state and because we understand that it is still the right place.

NOTES

Dr. Alexander is Lemuel Hardison Redd, Jr., Professor of Western American History at Brigham Young University and a former member of the Utah Board of State History He presented this paper as the first annual Utah History Address at the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Utah State Historical Society held July 13, 1995, in Salt Lake City.

1 This work has since been completed and published under the title Utah: The Right Place (Layton, Ut.: Gibbs Smith, Publisher, 1995).

2 On the question of survival see Russell Thornton, American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History since 1492 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987).

3 Kirkpatrick Sale, The Conquest ofParadise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1990).

4 Howard A Christy, "Open Hand and Mailed Fist: Mormon-Indian Relations in Utah, 1847-1852," Utah Historical Quarterly 46 (1978): 216-35; and "The Walker War: Defense and Conciliation as Strategy," UHQ41 (1979): 395-420.

5 LeonardJ Arrington, Feramorz Y Fox, and Dean L May, Building the City of God: Community and Cooperation among the Mormons (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1976), pp 7-9.

6 U.S Department of Commerce, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1986 (Washington, D C: Government Printing Office, 1985), p 314.

7 U.S Department of Commerce, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1994 (Washington, D C: Government Printing Office, 1994), p 340.

8 Salt Lake Tribune, September 7, 1992.

9 Elmo G Geary and Edward A Geary, "Community Dramatics in Early Castle Valley," Utah Historical Quarterly 53 (1985): 112-30.

10 Kenneth L Cannon II, " The National Game: A Social History of Baseball in Salt Lake City, 1868-1888" (M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1982), p. 59.